She heard the sound again, louder. Closer. A scratching noise, along on the side of the wall where the ivy clung to the trellis and covered the huge stone pillars supporting the terrace.
It was probably nothing, she tried to assure herself. A cat. Or just the wind, she ventured. But then why if it was only a cat, she asked herself, was she holding her breath and the neck of a champagne bottle so tightly in her fist? She crouched beside the bed and stared hard at the drawn cotton curtain hanging before the French doors. Silver blue moonlight shone through the sheer fabric, picking up the shadows from nearby trees that swayed to and fro in the easy breeze.
What to do, what to do, she wondered with growing panic. Run downstairs and get a knife from the kitchen? Call the police? Why didn't they have a gun?
Deciding on the second option, she reached for the phone. The number. What was the phone number? Drunk and scared, she struggled to remember the something-something-one number in her head, but no rhyme came. Instead, Jean-Pierre's phone jingle bleep-bleeped over and over in her mind.
The scraping sound again, much closer. As close as the edge of the concrete terrace wall.
The dial tone questioned loudly. She pressed the zero button and waited a moment before realizing her error. She remembered the number: 411. She smashed her thumb down on the disconnect button and redialed.
A large form settled heavily on the platform just beyond the door, a human form silhouetted against the curtain.
A voice from the handset: "What city please?"
Greta gasped and swallowed a dry lump in her throat as she realized her second error. Dear God, she had dialed wrong again. No, she had remembered wrong. Not 411!
"What city please?" the voice repeated.